Tempe Piggott Filmography

Forever Amber

Actors: Jane Ball, Linda Darnell, Cornel Wilde, Edmund Breon, Leo G. Carroll, Richard Greene, George Sanders, Robert Coote, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: They said it couldn't be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor's "notorious", bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor's novel, but the end result Read More

Kitty

Actors: Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Patric Knowles, Reginald Owen, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: Kitty is the "Pygmalion" legend, 18th century style. London aristocrat Ray Milland takes it upon himself to make a lady of a guttersnipe (Paulette Goddard, complete with a cockney accent not to be believed). Milland and fellow conspirator Constance Collier aren't bothering with the girl out of the Read More

Jane Eyre

Actors: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O'Brien, John Sutton, Peggy Ann Garner, Agnes Moorehead, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: Director Robert Stevenson collaborated with novelist Aldous Huxley and theatrical-producer John Houseman on the screenplay for this 1944 adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's gothic romance Jane Eyre. After several harrowing years in an orphanage, where she was placed by a supercilious relative for Read More

The Hour Before the Dawn

Actors: Franchot Tone, Binnie Barnes, John Sutton, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: In this wartime drama, set in England during early WW II, a rich young man becomes a conscientious objector because he cannot bear the thought of killing. He marries a governess at his mansion so that she can remain in the country. He doesn't know that she is a Nazi spy. Because of his objections Read More

Now, Voyager

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Gladys Cooper, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Davis plays repressed Charlotte Vale, dying on the vine thanks to Read More

One Foot in Heaven

Actors: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: Author Hartzell Spence's popular biography of his preacher father was the source for One Foot in Heaven. Fredric March stars as Methodist cleric William Spence, whose calling requires him to move his family from parish to parish on a near-monthly basis. The children resent the fact that they're Read More

Arise, My Love

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, Dennis O'Keefe, Dick Purcell, George Zucco

Synopsis: A serious journalist is sent to France and forced to write fashion fluff pieces. Tiring of this, she decides to sneak off to find an elusive notorious rebel and write a hard-new first-hand-account of the Spanish Civil War. This lively romantic comedy chronicles her adventures after she finds him Read More

The Earl of Chicago

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Edward Arnold, Reginald Owen, Edmund Gwenn, E.E. Clive

Synopsis: The schizophrenic screenplay of The Earl of Chicago is rendered even more bizarre by the uneven performance by Robert Montgomery. He plays Silky Kilmont, a Runyonesque American gangster who inherits a British title (Earl of Gorley) and mansion. Taking charge of his new estate, Silky has an amusing Read More

Waterloo Bridge

Actors: Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson, Virginia Field, Maria Ouspenskaya

Synopsis: Given the omnipresence of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1940, the second film version of Robert E. Sherwood's Waterloo Bridge would have to be laundered and softened to pass muster. In the original, made in 1931, the heroine is nothing more or less than a streetwalker, patrolling London's Read More

Fools for Scandal

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fernand Gravey, Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, Isabel Jeans

Synopsis: In her only Warner Bros. starring film, Carole Lombard plays a Hollywood movie actress who makes the park-bench acquaintance of an impoverished French marquis (Fernand Gravet). Hoping to coerce Carole into marriage, the nobleman poses as a butler and enters her household. His plan is to compromise Read More

The Road Back

Actors: Richard Cromwell, George "Slim" Summerville, Andy Devine, Barbara Read

Synopsis: A handful of German soldiers readjust to civilian life in the bitter wake of World War I in this follow-up to the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, which like the first film was based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. After the signing of the armistice, Capt. Von Hagen (John Emery) Read More

Suzy

Actors: Jean Harlow, Franchot Tone, Cary Grant, Benita Hume

Synopsis: Suzy is the film in which Cary Grant, overcome by the beauty and vivacity of Jean Harlow, sings her a love ballad! This lighthearted moment aside, Suzy, adapted from a novel by Herbert Gorman is a standard-issue love triangle, set against the tapestry of World War I. Harlow plays a London Read More

Timothy's Quest

Actors: Dickie Moore, Virginia Weidler, Eleanore Whitney, Tom Keene, Elizabeth Patterson

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1919, the Kate Douglas Wiggin novel Timothy's Quest was remade as a talkie in 1935. Dickie Moore plays Timothy Tarbox, a dewy-eyed orphan united in misery with his little sister Samantha (Virginia Weidler). The kids are taken in by maiden lady Vilda Cummins (Elizabeth Patterson Read More

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Actors: C. Aubrey Smith, Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: David O. Selznick's first independent production upheld the producer's tradition, established at Paramount, RKO and MGM, of bringing the "classics" to the screen. Adapted by Hugh Walpole from the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy is set in the late 19th century. After Read More

The Story of Louis Pasteur

Actors: Paul Muni, Akim Tamiroff, Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise, Donald Woods, Fritz Leiber

Synopsis: "Every time Paul Muni parts his beard and looks through a microscope, we lose a million dollars." Producer Jack Warner's lament concerning Muni's historical dramas is cute enough, but hardly backed up by facts; the economically produced The Story of Louis Pasteur proved to be a surprise hit for Read More

The White Angel

Actors: Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Donald Woods, Nigel Bruce, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Briefly breaking away from her high-gloss modern soap operas, Kay Francis stars as Florence Nightingale in this reverent Warner Bros. biopic. The screenplay concentrates on Nightingale's humanitarian activities during the Crimean War of 1854-55. Defiant in the face of military bureaucracy and the Read More

A Feather in Her Hat

Actors: Pauline Lord, Basil Rathbone, Louis Hayward, Billie Burke, Wendy Barrie

Synopsis: Legendary stage actress Pauline Lord made but a few films, but was always worth watching whenever she took command of the screen. In Feather in Her Hat, Lord plays cockney storekeeper Clarissa Phipps, who worries that her son Richard will grow up being ashamed of her humble vocation. Thus, she Read More

The Devil Is a Woman

Actors: Marlene Dietrich, Cesar Romero, Lionel Atwill, Edward Everett Horton, Alison Skipworth

Synopsis: Director Josef Von Sternberg and his greatest discovery, Marlene Dietrich, worked together for the last time on this historical melodrama, which was a notorious and controversial box-office flop in its day. Antonio Galvan (Cesar Romero), a young military officer, meets a mysterious and alluring Read More

Becky Sharp

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Billie Burke, Frances Dee, Alan Mowbray, Alison Skipworth

Synopsis: Now famous as the first feature film produced in the three-strip Technicolor process, Becky Sharp is also an enjoyable effort in its own right. Adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, the film stars Miriam Hopkins as Becky Sharp, a resourceful, totally self-involved young lady who Read More

The Bride of Frankenstein

Actors: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa Lanchester, Ernst Thesiger, Dwight Frye

Synopsis: This greatest of all Frankenstein movies begins during a raging thunderstorm. Warm and cozy inside their palatial villa, Lord Byron (Gavin Gordon), Percy Shelley (Douglas Walton), and Shelley's wife Mary (Elsa Lanchester) engage in morbidly sparkling conversation. The wicked Byron mockingly Read More

I Found Stella Parish

Actors: Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, Paul Lukas, Sybil Jason, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Kay Francis stars as Stella Parish, a London stage favorite who suddenly disappears without a trace. British news correspondent Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) girdles the globe in search of Stella, who has left her beloved daughter Gloria (Sybil Jason) in the care of an aunt (Jessie Ralph). Finally Read More

Calm Yourself

Actors: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Betty Furness, Nat Pendleton, Hardie Albright

Synopsis: Calm Yourself starts off as ace advertising man Pat (Robert Young) is fired from his job when he offends the highly offendable -- and none too likeable -- Mary Elizabeth (Betty Furness). This segues into a phony kidnapping scheme that thrusts Pat and Mary together, furthering their mutual Read More

A Tale of Two Cities

Actors: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: It is a tale known well, filmed many times over the years, but never better than this early black and white version from the MGM Studios, David O. Selznick producing. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"-- Charles Dickens juxtaposes England and France, George and Louis, tradition Read More

The Werewolf of London

Actors: Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Originally intended as a vehicle for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, this Universal production predated The Wolf Man by six years, but failed to whip up audience enthusiasm for the monster popularized by Lon Chaney, Jr. in the studio's later classic. Henry Hull stars as botanist Dr. Glendon, whose Read More

Limehouse Blues

Actors: George Raft, Jean Parker, Anna May Wong, Kent Taylor, Montagu Love

Synopsis: It's "Never the twain shall meet" time again, this time in London's Limehouse district. George Raft stars as Harry Young, a half-caste saloonkeeper who shelters beleaguered white girl Toni (Jean Parker) from her tormentors (shades of Broken Blossoms). Harry falls in love with the girl, but mixing Read More

The Lemon Drop Kid

Actors: Lee Tracy, Helen Mack, William Frawley, Minna Gombell, Baby Le Roy

Synopsis: Marshall Neilan, a great silent film director on the verge of obscurity, had one last big-studio stand with The Lemon Drop Kid. Lee Tracy plays a racetrack tout who calls himself a "horse medium"--that is, he reads the horse's minds for the gullible bettors. He quits the track for the love of a Read More

Of Human Bondage

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee, Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: The first of three film versions of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage stars Leslie Howard as sensitive, clubfooted artist-cum-med student Philip Carey. Despite his yearnings for the finer things in life, Carey cannot extricate himself from a mutually destructive relationship with sluttish Read More

One More River

Actors: Diana Wynyard, Frank Lawton, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Jane Wyatt, Colin Clive

Synopsis: A woman may be forced back into a dangerous relationship in order to save her good name in this drama from director James Whale. Lady Clare Corven (Diana Wynyard) is the wife of Sir Gerald Corven (Colin Clive), and by all appearances they're a happy upper-class British couple. But Lady Clare is Read More

Long Lost Father

Actors: John Barrymore, Helen Chandler, Donald Cook, Alan Mowbray, Claude King

Synopsis: John Barrymore is the Long Lost Father in this lightweight seriocomedy. Barrymore is felicitously cast as Carl Bellairs, who is unexpectedly reunited with Lindsay Lane (Helen Chandler), the daughter he deserted years earlier. Not surprisingly, Lindsay wants nothing to do with her prodigal dad Read More

Oliver Twist

Actors: Dickie Moore, Irving Pichel, William "Stage" Boyd, Doris Lloyd, Barbara Kent

Synopsis: Based on Dicken's classic novel, this is the first sound version of the oft-filmed tale of a plucky orphan who struggles to survive on the rough, unforgiving London streets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

A Study in Scarlet

Actors: Reginald Owen, Anna May Wong, June Clyde, Alan Dinehart, John Warburton

Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes and Watson solve a puzzling case in which a bloody foreign word is found beside a murder victim. The plot has little to do with author Doyle's original story of the same name. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

If I Were Free

Actors: Irene Dunne, Nils Asther, Clive Brook, Henry Stephenson, Vivian Tobin

Synopsis: The melodrama If I Were Free was adapted from the play Behold, We Live by John Van Druten. War veteran lawyer Gordon Evers (Clive Brook) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Catherine (Lorraine MacLean). Sarah Cazenove (Irene Dunne) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Tono (Nils Asther). The Read More

Man of the Forest

Actors: Randolph Scott, Verna Hillie, Harry Carey, Noah Beery, Sr., Barton MacLane

Synopsis: Man of the Forest is based on a Zane Grey story, previously filmed in 1921 and 1926. The title character is two-fisted frontiersman Brett Dale, played by Randolph Scott. Dale gets wind of a plot to kidnap Alice Gaynor (Verna Hillie), the daughter of wealthy rancher Jim Gaynor (Harry Carey) and Read More

Doctor Bull

Actors: Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Marian Nixon, Howard Lally, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Will Rogers is Dr. Bull, a small-town physician with precious little book learning. This doesn't stop him from ministering to the citizens, often substituting advice and witticisms for pills and sutures. There are those who resist Dr. Bull's everyday doses of common sense and humanity, especially Read More

Cavalcade

Actors: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin, Ursula Jeans, Beryl Mercer

Synopsis: The only Academy Award winning picture for Fox Studios (in its pre-20th Century-Fox era), Cavalcade is a stately film adaptation of the pageant-like stage hit by Noel Coward. The film concentrates on the years 1901 through 1933, as seen through the eyes of an upper-class British family and its Read More

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Actors: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Edgar Norton

Synopsis: This first sound version of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic morality tale starred Fredric March as the kindly, philanthropic Dr. Jekyll, who makes the fatal mistake of delving into secrets that Man Should Never Know. Fascinated with the notion that within each man lurk impulses for both Good and Read More

Devotion

Actors: Ann Harding, Leslie Howard, Robert Williams, O.P. Heggie, Louise Closser Hale

Synopsis: Devotion is a stiff, static early talkie in which everybody speaks in stage British and suffers in dinner jackets. Ann Harding is desperately in love with London barrister Leslie Howard. To be nearer to him, she dons a disguise (wig and spectacles) and takes a job as the governess to Howard's son. Read More

Night Work

Synopsis: In this heartwarming drama, an amiable department store worker gets more than he bargained for when he accidentally slips a $10 tip he'd received into the hands of a nurse looking for donations to an orphanage on the way to the bank. By doing this, he unwittingly committed himself to supporting Read More

Seven Days Leave

Actors: Gary Cooper, Beryl Mercer, Daisy Belmore, Nora Cecil

Synopsis: Out of sympathy, a grown lad fighting for Canada in World War I agrees to let an older childless woman adopt him, becoming unexpectedly close to her just before he's shipped off to combat in this sentimental war drama. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Road House

Actors: Maria Alba, Lionel Barrymore, Julia Swayne Gordon, Tempe Piggott

Wallflowers

Actors: Hugh Trevor, Mabel Julienne Scott, Jean Arthur, Lola Todd, Charles E. Stevenson

Synopsis: Wallflowers was based on a novel by Temple Bailey. The central character, a scheming social climber played by Mabel Julienne Scott, intends to force her stepson Hugh Trevor into a marriage of convenience. But Trevor has developed a fondness for shy Jean Arthur, the "wallflower" of the title. How Read More

Midnight Kiss

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Richard Walling, Arthur Houseman, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: This early Janet Gaynor vehicle was based on Pigs, a play by John Golden. While vain Gladys O'Connell busies herself with her romantic pursuits, O'Connell's kid sister Gaynor tries to keep the family of her boyfriend Richard Walling from going broke. Gaynor works up a business arrangement, whereby Read More

The Black Pirate

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Donald Crisp, Tempe Piggott, Anders Randolf, Sam de Grasse

Synopsis: The Black Pirate was hailed in 1926 as the "return" of the Douglas Fairbanks who'd breezed through several peppy comedies before starring in lavish costume epics like Robin Hood (1922) and Thief of Bagdad (1924). The story involves a young nobleman (Fairbanks) whose father is killed by pirates. He Read More

Dawn of a Tomorrow

Actors: Jacqueline Logan, Raymond Griffith, David Torrence, Roland Bottomley, Harris Gordon

Synopsis: Mary Pickford starred in the 1915 version of this film, based on the Frances Hodgson Burnett story, and it's easy to imagine her in the Pollyanna-like role of Glad. Jacqueline Logan is good enough as the sunny girl of the slums, but she's no Pickford. When Sir Oliver Holt (David Torrence) has a Read More

Greed

Actors: Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton

Synopsis: Frank Norris' powerful Zola-esque novel McTeague was first filmed in 1915. While filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim would insist that he'd been enthralled by the book since it first came out in 1902, it is more likely that he didn't make the novel's acquaintance until seeing that 1915 film. Whatever the Read More

The Narrow Street

Actors: Matt Moore, David Butler, Russell Simpson, Gertrude Short

Synopsis: While this light comedy (based on the novel by Edwin Bateman Morris) was nothing really special, it still was an amusing program picture. Simon Haldane (Matt Moore), a clerk for the Faulkner Iron Works, is a meek, absent-minded type, who is the butt of most of the jokes at the office. He's Read More

The Masked Avenger

Synopsis: Handsome Lester Cuneo, formerly of the Tom Mix stock company, advertised himself as "The Smiling Daredevil" in the hopes of becoming a viable rival to his former employer, Mix. He never came close, but some of the Cuneo westerns did have some merits, especially The Masked Avenger. Cuneo plays a Read More

Great Impersonation

Actors: James Kirkwood, Ann Forrest, Winter Hall, Truly Shattuck, Fontaine La Rue, Alan Hale

Synopsis: Paramount was taking a chance by making this picture -- based on a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim -- almost two years after the end of World War I. It's a spy story that takes place in the days prior to the "war to end all wars" -- not a popular subject by the end of 1921. Perhaps the studio Read More